I received this book from the publisher/Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

I was so excited about this one, it sounded dark and scary, but in the end I am quite disappointed.

The main problem was that the first part, the POV of the girls or well Rosalyn, was just horribly hard to read. I read the blurb, I read the warnings in the back, I knew I was going in for a ride given I have been bullied myself, but holy shit I had not expected it to be THIS horrific from the start. From the get-go we see that this game is super toxic. A crown made of barbed wire for instance. Three girls around the same age and they are just bullying each other? Rosalyn just got back from punishment with the matron because she was in the garden… where she was finding her clothes again as one of the two girls yeeted those out of the window. There are constant threats, constant bullying, constant survival mode, constantly wondering what would be next. These girls were out for each other. And all that for a game. A game in which one of them will be queen and can order around the others. A game in which the bullying escalates. The pranks escalate. And then two more girls come into the orphanage and things escalate so much that I was just wondering if I should drop it. If I should just stop. Because this was just too much. These are 9-10 year olds, and kids can be cruel, but holy shit, these 5 were demons. Especially the two ringleaders, Sophie and Marie. I am still not sure which of these two I found the worst. Oh, did I mention the scepter? A hammer made of FUCKING nails. Yep. And they use it as well. In the mean time the Matron didn’t seem to give a damned about who was right or who was wrong and just hit the girls and punished them when she saw fit. It was just so messed up and I wanted to just yeet my Kindle at the wall. Then when you think things cannot get more fucked up it ends in flames.

Oh, and I know that this book is set in the early 1900s but WTF with not having any way at all out of the house.

Then at around 60% we go to another POV, the after. A man who can spirits is trying to help out with rebuilding the hall. Why the fuck people in horror books are always so eager to rebuild on ground with ghosts or death I don’t know, but it is messed up. Andrew acts like an ambassador. Yep. The girls are, even in death and hell and damnation, still playing the game. To the fullest. The crown is still in the game. The scepter is there as well. And the girls are not giving up. That is also why I had a hard time reading this one, the girls seem to know they were dead, that time had passed, that things were different, and yet they still wanted to murder each other. Andrew was an interesting character, though I found him the most interesting in the beginning when he wasn’t as entwined with the ghosts and the house. We see years pass, we see that the house is now just for tours (ghost tours it seems). No one can live in the house because the girls will want to play with them. And as I said in the previous part, the girls play mean.

I loved the epilogue with the guide to the house and the ghosts. That was by far my favourite part of the whole damned book.

Along with the cover which is so haunting now that I know what is going on. What that crown means. What that blood means. What those symbols mean.

But all in all, this was not my book of the year. I was just so angry, so horrified, so shocked, if I had known it was going to be this bad I wouldn’t have requested it. I would have just let it go by. The first part I can only rate 0.5 star, the second part gets a 2.5 star.